56 (b. 1957), Anchor, Today, 1997-present

I was always more interested in asking people about themselves than I was telling them about me.

There's a difference between good chemistry and a bond. Chemistry is something you have with somebody you meet — or you don't. It's an intangible. It may be superficial. It's much harder to put your finger on than a bond. Broadcasting through 9/11 together, like Katie Couric and I did, creates a bond.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

It's a weird characteristic, and I don't know where it comes from, but the bigger the interview, the calmer I get.

I learned more from my dad by osmosis than by any talk we ever had. He was the most reliable person I've ever met.

There was always an unspoken generosity about my mom. I would jump in my Volkswagen Beetle and drive home from Ohio University and get to Greenwich by dinnertime. I'd walk in and surprise her and my stepfather. My mom would jump up, hug me, and say, "Pull up a chair. We have plenty of food!" She'd walk to the kitchen with her plate and around the corner, where I couldn't see her, take the pot roast off her plate, put it on another plate, slide over half her mashed potatoes, and then she'd come out with this great plate for me. When I looked at her plate, I realized there was almost nothing on it. I'd say, "Mom—" And she'd say, "I ate before you got here."

More From Esquire

So many times my son and I will be watching a baseball game together and a popular player hits a home run, and as he's running around the bases, my son, without hesitation, will look up at me and ask, "You think he's on steroids?" Heroes have been broken before his eyes so many times, and that's disheartening.

I don't find anything comes out of getting in someone's face during an interview and screaming.

When you have a sense that emotions are being used to manipulate, you have to jump in and cut it off. But when there's real, honest emotion coming out, like when Tom Cruise got worked up over his belief system on antidepressant drugs, you let that go because there's no replacing that reality. If you were to cut that off, you'd be doing your viewers a disservice. My job was to stay out of the way.

Early on, I had five jobs in a row where I was either fired or canceled. One or two times you can say, "They don't know what they're talking about. They don't know talent when they see it." After the fifth time, if you don't look in the mirror and ask yourself some really serious questions about whether you're cut out to be in this business, you're an idiot.

Over the course of twenty years that I've been at NBC, I have never seen the amount of money I make reported correctly by the media.

Someone once wrote a wonderful complimentary little blurb about me. At the end, the writer said, "So that's why we love Matt Lauer. Of course, the day will probably come when we're going to have to kick his ass." I never forgot that. Voilà.

The way the media treated what happened with Ann Curry was a disappointing learning experience. I was disappointed by the laziness of the media, the willingness to read a rumor, repeat that rumor, and treat it as a fact. And yet, what were my options? Does anyone want to see a person who's making the money that the newspapers say I'm making complaining, "Woe is me, my life is terrible, and people are being unfair"? No one would've had any patience for that. I wouldn't have any patience for that. So you just shut up and go about doing your job and hope that people who know you well — your friends and your family — know what's true.

If I were to write a contract and put it in front of a group of young broadcasters and journalists, and on this piece of paper it said, "You're going to have twenty years as host of the Today show, and eighteen of those years are going to be so unbelievably fantastic that you're going to think you're living in a fantasy world. And one or two of those years is going to be incredibly frustrating and challenging," don't you think every single one of those young broadcasters and journalists would grab that paper out of my hand and sign on the dotted line?

I like fishing as much when I don't catch anything as when I do.

If I feel like I've done a great job during an interview with the president of the United States live in the Oval Office, it doesn't give me a tenth of the good feeling of going to the school play and making eye contact with my kids as they're onstage delivering their lines. Nothing compares with that moment of connection.

I've always liked the idea of walking into a cocktail party where there are different people and finding some connection with almost everybody in the room.

When you punch a guy with four Budweisers in him, he tends to go down a lot faster than a guy who is stone sober.